TO LEONARD...
Everybody Knows.....
“You know who I am…you’ve stared at the sun” — L. Cohen
First irresistibly drawn
that dark winter evening in ’72
by the canticle thrumming
in your deep bass
from some back parlor
in a long-ago-forgotten
farmhouse
entrancing me down
someone’s hallway…
past somebody’s rooms…
following slivers of your
haunted lyric,
the rise and fall of your
haunting timbre,
your imagery of saintly sins,
harlots and holy sisters--
your one-man Gregorian chant
spiraling like spun gold
from the ebony grooves
on the turntable altar
I found there
and before which
I lingered away the evening
shunning hosts and company and etiquette
and there… some ethereal mystery lady
some Suzanne… fed me
“tea and oranges...
all the way from China”--
there is,
hardwired within me,
a harmonic homing device
a gland, perhaps, that
resonates
“like a drunk in
some midnight choir”
in response to the mystical frequencies
of the darker spiritual wavebands…
that compels me to imprint on them
(like the sunflower that ‘locks’ on the sun)
and to follow, as a disciple... an apostle--
I understand now why moths
consume themselves in flame:
...if your voice is fire
“then I, I must be wood…”
First irresistibly drawn
that dark winter evening in ’72
by the canticle thrumming
in your deep bass
from some back parlor
in a long-ago-forgotten
farmhouse
entrancing me down
someone’s hallway…
past somebody’s rooms…
following slivers of your
haunted lyric,
the rise and fall of your
haunting timbre,
your imagery of saintly sins,
harlots and holy sisters--
your one-man Gregorian chant
spiraling like spun gold
from the ebony grooves
on the turntable altar
I found there
and before which
I lingered away the evening
shunning hosts and company and etiquette
and there… some ethereal mystery lady
some Suzanne… fed me
“tea and oranges...
all the way from China”--
there is,
hardwired within me,
a harmonic homing device
a gland, perhaps, that
resonates
“like a drunk in
some midnight choir”
in response to the mystical frequencies
of the darker spiritual wavebands…
that compels me to imprint on them
(like the sunflower that ‘locks’ on the sun)
and to follow, as a disciple... an apostle--
I understand now why moths
consume themselves in flame:
...if your voice is fire
“then I, I must be wood…”
